The National Furniture System Consortium, conceived and promoted by FederlegnoArredo, to deal with the end-of-life of the sector's products, has been formally established with the first 15 member companies representing a total value that exceeds two billion euros in turnover.  

The goal is to support the furniture sector in the full green transition, enabling companies to be ready for a possible future implementation of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) by the legislature

A Consortium operating throughout the country

The Consortium, announced last June at the Federation's annual meeting, will be able to be operational throughout the country, guaranteeing the take-back, collection, recovery and recycling of waste furniture and other furniture products, as well as their reuse, accelerating the transition to the circular economy of a sector already strongly committed to this direction.

It is chaired by Claudio Feltrin, president of FederlegnoArredo, who together with Maria Porro, president of Assarredo, and Roberto Pompa of the Assarredo board of directors, make up the BoD. The development and operation of the National Furniture System Consortium will be guaranteed by a steering committee made up of technical and highly specialized figures, who will work in synergy with the companies and the BoD.

Turning a legal obligation into a strategic opportunity

FederlegnoArredo, together with furniture companies, is thus becoming the interpreter and at the same time the forerunner of an epochal change that the EPR will bring, turning a possible legal obligation into a strategic opportunity.

As Claudio Feltrin explains, “With the subscription of our companies, the Voluntary Consortium has taken shape and we are already operational, together with the control room and the Ministry of Environment and Energy Security, to analyze in detail the operating conditions of a possible EPR regime for the furniture sector. Fundamental in this sense precisely the collaboration with the Ministry with which we are working to conclude, as indicated by the same Ministry, a Program Agreement that authorizes us to concretely explore the solutions and conventions that the EPR regime could activate with all the players in the supply chain.”

Creating an increasingly circular production model

Maria Porro, as President of Assarredo, adds that, “The National Furniture System Consortium will enable us to accelerate the sustainability goals of the entire sector and renew the strategies of the entire furniture supply chain, which aims not only at waste management but also at activating a reuse system that extends the life and valorization of products as much as possible, as addressed by the Green Deal. This is a very important step that testifies to how the sector, which has always been ahead of its time, has decided to get involved, with an approach that starts from the bottom and seizes the opportunity to create an increasingly circular production model.” He concludes by saying, “Therefore, I would like to thank the Assarredo companies who, with foresight, decided two years ago to embark on this participatory path whose common goal is to make the supply chain more competitive.”